ON MY MIND

ON MY MIND; A Call From Mr. Jackson

By A. M. Rosenthal

Published: July 26, 1988

Jesse Jackson called to talk about something he says has hurt him deeply, is totally and bitterly unfair and that he has tried time and time again to put to rest. He spoke with emotion and with passion, as much as I have ever heard from this emotional and passionate man, in public or in private.

Mr. Jackson called to protest, fully and richly, about something I wrote about him and American Jews, in a column from Atlanta on July 19.

The column seemed to me and some readers sympathetic to Mr. Jackson to be generally complimentary to him. It spoke of his accomplishment in becoming the first major black national candidate and said that he would remain an important part of the American scene for a long time.

But for Mr. Jackson this statement clearly overshadowed anything, favorable or otherwise, that I wrote or could write about him:

''He prides himself on reaching out to Cubans, Koreans, Mexicans, just about everybody, but has never found it in him to reach out so eagerly to Jews.''

Then there was a comment that many American Jews feared him and believed ''quite correctly'' that his warmth for the P.L.O. could be a livid danger to Israel.

The purpose of this column is to report what he said and add that I think nobody could have listened to him without feeling that he was talking from deep inside himself, saying ''Please, understand me.''

I took notes hurriedly and know some words and passages are missing. But this is the essence of what he had to say during one of the most in-triguing telephone conversations I have had:

''It is not true that I have not reached out to American Jews; it is not true. I have reached out time and again, and sometimes I reached out in pain. I reached out in the 1984 convention [ when he expressed regrets to all he might have hurt during the primaries ] . I reached out when I went to Gorbachev and faced him about Soviet Jews.

''When Reagan went to Bitburg, when he laid a wreath there, where SS men are buried, I went to a concentration camp and reached out.

''In Chicago, I fought against those who painted swastikas. I reached out to American Jews and I reached out and I reached out.''

He said he is still reaching out: ''I could have forced a vote on Palestinian statehood in Atlanta and would have won, but I did not want to do that, and I was right not to do it.''

Mr. Jackson said that Mayor Koch's attack against him during the New York primary was ''unleashing of hatred.'' And, when asked, he said he had declined to meet with leaders of Jewish organizations because their minds were made up against him.

But, although he still clearly has anger in him about what he sees as mistreatment and misperceptions, the whole purpose of what he had to say was not an attack or even a defense. It was a serious cry against what he said was the total unfairness, to the point of racism, of saying that he is against the Jews or will not reach out to them. Unfair, dangerous, wrong, not the truth about Jesse Jackson, he said, repeatedly.

He talked about his own record and Ronald Reagan's. Mr. Reagan, he said, opened his 1980 campaign in the once deeply segregationist town of Philadelphia, Miss.: ''That was a racist signal to the South.''

Mr. Reagan had gone to Bitburg, had not disassociated himself from South Africa. But nobody denounces Ronald Reagan, said Mr. Jackson, nobody draws the Philadelphia-Bitburg-Johannesburg connection, nobody keeps asking Ronald Reagan to recant or apologize.

But Jesse Jackson, he said, talks about Philadelphia, Miss., to call out the names of the two Jewish civil rights workers and their black colleague who were murdered there.

''I went to a concentration camp when Reagan went to Bitburg, and I fought against racism from Chicago to Johannesburg. Yet it is I who am constantly being called upon to explain myself and am accused of anti-Semitism and not reaching out to Jews. That is not right.''

He said other American ethnic groups reach out to him more than do the Jews. But again, it was clear that the point of the call was not to vent anger, but to say some things as strongly as he could:

He is not antagonistic to Jews. It is false and dangerous to him and them to try to isolate Jews and Jackson from each other. He has tried constantly to reach out to American Jews and is not ceasing.

Then, Mr. Jackson said, he thought it was only right that everybody hear those things he was saying on the phone.